


Life after First Death

by StripySock



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Canon Era, M/M, Post Seine, Resolved Sexual Tension, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-28
Updated: 2013-06-28
Packaged: 2017-12-16 11:51:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/861686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StripySock/pseuds/StripySock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Seine, Javert must grow accustomed to Valjean and the inexorable feelings that seem to be growing between them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life after First Death

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a very late pinch hit for _#47: Javert tops. I don’t really even care in what context, what era, fluff/kink/dubcon, etc. Let’s see Javert stick his dick in someone for once._

When he crawled out of the Seine, aided by hands he suspects were criminal (given the haste with which his saviour had disappeared into the night on retrieving his card from his inner pocket) he is delirious with fever. Whether it is his weakened mind or constitution or some dark sickness from the waters, he is overcome. Somehow, with the same ability that Madeleine had once displayed for finding those in need, Valjean appears upon his doorstep and will not yield. Javert is in no state to protest, neither at the beginning nor even when he slowly recovers. Valjean visits with the singleminded intent of a man not only bent on charity but desirous of avoiding something of his own. Gradually, though he would never admit it, Javert grows used to the presence of the other man and once he does, more disturbing things come to light.

 

There's no benediction in the touch that Valjean lays upon Javert's shoulder - as though he knows he cannot bear too much kindness too swiftly. There is fellow-feeling, though, subtle and aching as though Valjean can understand what now boils through Javert's soul. Javert fears it must be written on his face, cracked wide and open, spilling out all that he feels, the barrier that had held back the flood now gone. When last he fractured open, when last he let doubt niggle at his soul, he had paid the price; had felt the cold press of water drown him, pressing in so deep that he had known no more. Sometimes it roils uneasily inside him still, a cold phantom of pressure as though he carries with him the dark knowledge of the river.

 

By contrast, Valjean runs hot to his bones, damp and feverish sometimes, other times dry and still and burning as though he is tinder ready to spark. Javert does not touch him and yet he still knows this, though he could not say how. He observes: a habit he has not broken himself of even in this place where none of it matters. He feels the heat exuded when Valjean stands too close, just a little away, enough that if Javert were not strict about his limbs then they would touch. The memory of that touch on the shoulder is enough to remind him of the burn; he does not seek to repeat the experience.

 

This is a lie. He acknowledges this to himself with an unbending flagellation of soul he has never shrunk from, that is all that is now left to his credit in the pitiful ledger of his life. He shaves with steady hands, and this truth thrums through him and always will. He meets his eyes in the mirror and does not flinch from the pathetic knowledge that fills them. He does not know what he thinks he will find in Valjean's touch, what it will reveal in him, but something in him is hurt by the thought, as though muscles too long neglected within his soul are slowly being stretched and awakened.

 

Valjean punctiliously leaves his copies of Le Moniteur on the table of Javert's room, as if he divines that Javert would like to peruse them, and, as grimly as though it were a duty, Javert does so. It is his punishment, he thinks, that now his eyes have been opened to injustice, he cannot shut them again. This thief, taken in the act, was caught by Lemarchal, a man who had had the reputation of not caring overly much about the truth. This sentence was commuted for a man who had nothing to his credit bar his magistrate father; this woman was summoned before the court but her testimony was so confused that she had not been given the chance to speak. There is nothing he can do but trace his past in the words, his unrecognised failures picked apart and laid bare. He tries not to think too much on what he has done, or the strange ache that had so absorbed his brain before he fell threatens to return, the heavy blackness that had seemed so impenetrable and absolute at the time that he had had no choice but to yield to it.

 

He finds pleasure now in small things as he had rarely done before. There is a comfort in hot water, in the brisk crispness of a shave, and the freshness of clean sheets that is undemanding. There is no moral complexity in a bread roll, no ethical dilemma in the first cool breath of air in the evening; they are a respite from the torment that inevitably seizes him when he thinks of the future. His letter had been dispatched; he does not know if his suggestions of small reforms had been heeded, he does not know if there is a place for him still in the police force, he does not know anything except how to live each day as it is. This enforced lassitude, this uncommon helplessness wears on him, of course, but he adjusts as best as he can and builds routines once more.

 

The bad chill he had taken had made its way to the marrow of his bones, and he feels older than Valjean - who is still hale and hearty, if a little worn around the edges; whose face may be thin and his hair white, but whose hands are still unconscionably strong and surprisingly tender when they offer what help Javert can bring himself to accept. As much as reading the paper, as walking three steps too far before the coughing starts, this help, Javert tells himself, is part of his punishment: extra coals heaped on a burning crown.

 

Valjean does not presume too much with this strange and absent tenderness, he does not seem to consider the rights or the wrongs of it, merely acts according to instinct, as though responding to a clarion call that Javert cannot hear. He wonders, in the depths of his own sickness, tossing and turning restlessly around and around, if it's the same voice that had dismayed Javert from attempting to deliver up Valjean to the law despite the restless stirrings that were already multiplying in him. To come too close to the thought of God is still too painful; he shies from it as he does not from the other changes that the wreckage of his world has wrought.

 

In the end it's simpler than anything he could ever have imagined; almost painfully so. There has been a shadow of it between them, a tension that has underlaid the way they speak, the way Valjean sets the table so neatly and quickly and sits a handspan away and does not eat while between them is an impassable silence. He tries, stiffly, to start a conversation, but all too soon it peters into nothing but muttered requests for the salt. He wonders what Valjean, whose face is so sad in repose, takes from these meetings. He cannot attribute malicious intentions to him; that is beyond him now. A man great enough to force a change in the depths of another’s soul would not stoop so low to mockery of that which he has conquered. Still, he wonders what possible satisfaction or company he could give and almost resents the shortfall that exists so visibly.

 

Sometimes, with a changed countenance, Valjean will mention his daughter and her fiance; will, with brief hesitation, tell Javert of some cunning thing they have planned for the house or the intentions they have for the garden. It is at these times that Javert can read him best; can see tell of some understandable feeling that flits across his face, as though there is some ancient pain resurrected in these instances; as though it costs him more than it should to enact the proud father’s happiness. It is a little odd, Javert believes, that what there is of Valjean that is clearest to him is connected to something of which Javert has no experience. He has never partaken in the dubious joys of fatherhood, and yet in this and this alone he sees Valjean without the veil of the past cast over him.

 

In the end there is a bottle of wine, there is a fire, and Valjean sunk in thought beside it, and Javert does not know how it happens, but when he fumbles for the coals and drops the scuttle with a curse that belongs to the streets and not to the newly found sanctity of his room, Valjean is there, too close, and what is between them is made clear. It is not a staggering shock to his mind, however recently weakened it may have been; he wets his lips and looks away, though he is more sure than he has ever been of anything (save once the law) that it is not only him.

 

The look in Valjean's eyes is an unexpected tenderness, one Javert has seen when he speaks of Cosette, and he is more thankful than he can say that it is not the absent kindness that Valjean bestows impartially on those in need, that he gives out along with sous and food. Still, he hesitates, for there can be nothing in this new life as easy as this would seem to be. The ground has shifted under his feet so many times, there is nothing solid, and he has grown accustomed to feeling the way before him with care, as though some sudden quake may again upend his equilibrium and leave him sprawling once more.

 

He may have a little trust in Valjean's candid nature, but he has no trust left in himself, save what he claws back each day. Thus he remains as though struck to stone for long seconds, the heat of the fire scorching him through his coat, until Valjean's intent gaze wavers, as though he believes himself mistaken.

 

Javert believes he has courage. Or, rather, he believes that once, in the service of the state, he had not hesitated to fling himself into the fray. If that is courage, he cannot say; there had been more intransigence perhaps than fervour. He had done what was necessary, not heeded the risk to his body, certain in what he was doing. That crutch has been removed. If he is to be proved brave now in this new world, it will not be with a bullet.  It is with cautious fingers that he touches the hand that holds the scuttle still, feels the coarseness of it beneath his fingers, the knotted quality of the muscle; allows himself to reach forth, however hesitantly, and touch as he has quietly wanted for a surprisingly long time.

 

Beneath his fingers he feels Valjean tremble and feels an unexpected surge of unnamed feelings course through him. He cannot pick them apart; he does not believe he has ever felt them before. It is painfully evident that neither of them are used to this, there are no easy words, neither of them have any idea how best to make this work. The air between them is suffused with the unspoken, but with only the littlest fuss, their fingers interlock for brief seconds before falling away; between them there is now acknowledged anticipation, as though a shared uncertainty has broken some difficulty. Javert has only vague memories of times past, of other lives he has intersected with, however briefly, to guide him in this; stolen moments that he has interrupted in so many contexts. They jumble together in his mind- a man who folded his fingers between his wife's as he was taken away; the muffled indignities of two men, fearful of discovery, pressed against a wall as he traversed the street. He is not sure whether they are better than no guide at all.

 

He has never felt this, the sudden warmth and flush of his limbs that he cannot attribute merely to the fire; how strange it is that he should find it in this place, at this time. He does not know what Valjean has felt, what he has done in times gone by, but there is something in the quality of his face and the way he looks that bespeaks a similar fright. The kiss is beyond clumsy; it catches first cheek, then nose, as though the lips are wary of the touch, and then unbelievably they catch and hold. Javert thinks that he must be lost, that he has stumbled into a faster grip than death itself, which had after all spat him back out of the river. It lasts brief seconds only, but for those seconds he is held closer than he had thought possible, as though the touch is the only sane thing in a world turned upside down.

 

In the weeks that follow, Valjean is a regular visitor still to Javert's meagre rooms; though, as time goes by, Javert does not require from him even the little assistance he had allowed Valjean to render him before when close to death. He has lived poorly by any standard; has saved, for some indistinct future day that had never been real.  This cushion secures him in the standard to which he is accustomed, a standard that Valjean never remarks on, as though he is in perfect obliviousness to the way in which Javert chooses to live.

 

Occasionally, Javert accepts reciprocal invitations to Valjean's house. He arrives on the dot and takes leave as precisely, that he need not encounter the other residents of the house. (Once, he overstayed five minutes, and had a narrow escape from a  young woman in a silk lined cloak and a bonnet that frightened him more than the combined efforts of Patron-Minette ever could.)

 

Yet, without speaking of it, Valjean seems to prefer Javert's rooms for the gradual unfolding of what has so unexpectedly grown between them - as though two weeds in a crowded garden had silently agreed to combine their roots.  When he came it was with gifts: perhaps a bottle of wine that he thought Javert would enjoy, once or twice an awkward basket of pastries, the napkin folded by some unknown feminine hand - which, after Javert had eaten one, would linger on the sill until they went stale. Valjean offers them not as excuses for his presence but out of an urge to share that seems part of him, wound through his nature so deeply it can’t be excised.

 

The wine helps a little in the first awkwardness of their touches, in the fleeting haste with which they engage each other.  They grow more practiced, more knowing of what brings pleasure; more skilled, first in kisses and then in each other’s bodies; each step into the unknown a second's fearful drop before reassurance.

 

It is about this time that Javert approaches the Prefet of the district and requests to return to his job. When he had crawled out of the Seine, aided by who knew what hand, he had been shattered, and fever had consumed him- the limitless cold and rankness of the river taking their toll on a body that had long known self-denial.  He had, with the aid (as he flushed now to remember) of Valjean, written a note in a hand so weak he disliked remembering it, of his circumstances; and, on receipt of an equally careless note, had been excused from duty.

 

The Prefet receives him kindly enough, gives him a chair, and listens to him with deliberation. After steepling his fingers under his chin for some time, he opens one of the drawers in his office and with careful fingers sorts through the folded papers within until he removes a piece of paper intimately familiar to Javert - though he had only seen it once, and that within the grips of a madness that had suffused him body and mind.  Seeing it now he would’ve flinched if the internal rhythm of law that had so prevailed itself upon him once more in this place of authority had not kept him straight and still before the Prefet.

 

The piece of paper is turned over between cool and elegant fingers; the Prefet stares over Javert’s head as though lost in thought. “You have a good memory;” he says, “your details have not gone unnoticed. Naturally, we cannot implement all you suggest, for obvious reasons,” though he declines to expand on the obvious reasons. “I’m afraid that at present we have no position suitable for you. However, I shall be happy, Monsieur Javert, to assist you in any way possible. I can write you a letter of recommendation, most certainly.”

 

Javert numbly assents to this, struck with a shock that is not mitigated by the anticipation that, as much as he had changed, there could be no place for him within the office that had defined him for as long as he could remember. He is fumbling once more for his hat when the Prefet stops him with a raised hand.

 

“Monsieur Javert,” he says with studied politeness. “I cannot offer you your position as Inspector back; it is not within my power to do so--” a lie, Javert notes, and disapproves of in the abstract even now-- “but I have friends within a certain segment of the police force who would welcome the insights I feel you could bring. I should be happy to let them know of my belief that you could be of assistance. They shall contact you if this is acceptable.”

 

Even without knowing what department he spoke of, Javert is conscious of a shabby treatment being enacted that the Prefet, troubled by some unknown pang of conscience, seeks to ameliorate with this tossed bone. But - to live without working is impossible, and there seems nothing else he can turn his hand to. “I should be grateful,” he says briefly, with as much courtesy as he can muster in his voice.  

 

When he is again in the street he turns blind eyes to the sky. A black mood kin to the one that had seized him on the fateful night he had taken his life into his own hands is on him; as he walks back to his lodgings, he is overtaken with a melancholy that seems impossible to shake off.

 

He does not know what shows in his face when he returned; only that Valjean who had opened the wine already, lays the glasses aside and advances to meet him halfway across the room. Javert, who can remember at no time in his life before the present, the comfort of a friendly hand - nor any need for such - draws back a little, as though to control himself.

 

He carries within himself, he understands all too well, the characteristics of a nature that, deprived of the support round which he had twined himself for too long, is closer to the shifting unceasing movement of the sea. To beggar his past of what it had been worth, to thrust from himself all his reactions would be to destroy himself utterly. He does not know, in the face of what he had planned, what he can place in the chief idolaters position that he before had assigned to the law and the false face of justice. It would not be fair - the word itself seems rusty and unused even in his mind - to suffocate Valjean within Javert’s thoughts.  With a gesture of despair, he turns aside.

 

Valjean’s hands are firm on his shoulders, as though in his ponderings Javert had forgotten that he was not alone; and, although he is silent, the question still hangs unanswered. Javert, overtaken with a savagery that had manifested itself before only in the hunt, wracked with feelings that cannot be spoken for fear that he could not stop, presses his fingers into his brow with an unconscious strength until he calms.

 

There is no question of returning to the meal that Valjean had provided; Javert needs, suddenly, nothing more than to be close to the one thing that has not changed since he had returned from the brink of death. Valjean seems seized by the same urgent need; softened not at all by the haze of good wine, or the sky still light outside the window, it takes on a palpable force that none of their play had had before. The tender uncertainty of their kisses is gone; a new energy fills them, as though there is a seriousness that permeates the air and gives heat and strength to their kisses.

 

Javert feels the hardening of his prick under the official clothing that he had worn to the Prefet’s office.  It is a little water-spoiled, a little musty from disuse despite how long he had aired it in the still air outside his window; he wants nothing more than to feel the honesty of skin against him instead.  Valjean, who hardens more slowly than him, but with as much eagerness, presses against him as though he desires the same.

 

They are so close together that, without clothing, they would almost have been one; Javert, devoid of embarrassment for this one moment at least, wants nothing more. When Valjean lifts off his shirt, the scars that striped his back reproach Javert in a way that Valjean never would: thin raised flesh that criss-crosses his back- white and shiny, the marks of long years that will never fade from either his body or his soul, and Javert does not look away. With unconscious volition he wrestles his own clothing from himself - the coat, the shirt, the leather stock - and lays them on a chair before bending once more to Valjean and kissing him again, chest against chest, skin against skin, warming slowly against each other.

 

Beneath his trousers Javert is fully hard now.  With dexterity he tugs down Valjean’s trousers and rocks them against each other a little more, instinct winning out; each jerk of his hips met with reciprocal intensity by Valjean. In the end it is Valjean who draws back, his face almost unrecognisable, eyes darkened, mouth wet, and with firmness draws Javert to the narrow bed that serves him well enough alone but is plainly unsuitable for two full grown men. The singing of blood in his ears drives the fleeting thought from Javert’s head as Valjean denudes himself with the thoughtlessness of a man who feels he has no need of deception. With frantic motion he strips himself as well and, with a careless movement, pulls Valjean to him.

 

He had seen the other man naked once; had palmed Valjean’s prick through his trousers and felt him spill against his thigh several times now; and, once, as naturally as breathing, Valjean had bent his head and taken Javert in, hot and wet and clumsy. Though Javert has nothing to compare it to, there is nothing he would have traded for that in heaven or on earth - or so he'd thought until now, as he feels Valjean bracket him inch for inch, warmed through now, with the hardness of his prick a steady presence against Javert’s thigh.

 

With fingers that clutch too deep, Javert drags his hands along Valjean’s sides as though to reiterate his presence and bind him close; he feels Valjean gasp against him, a hidden inhale of air. Emboldened,  he draws his fingers not merely down his flanks but across the expanse of his back, encountering the scars and softening his touch for those brief seconds, in acknowledgement if nothing else.

 

There is only heat between them, Valjean as eager as Javert, rolling his hips against him as best as he can.  The memories of his discussion with the Prefet are faded and dull compared to this - for now, at least.  Javert does not know how to ask for what he wants, how to frame or suggest the urges he feels; does not know even how they may be accomplished. He has only half remembered fragments of knowledge: so many coarse words, so few details. He trails his fingers across Valjean's skin again, brushes the top of his cleft with a careful caress. Valjean stills against him for seconds and Javert regrets it.

 

Without a word Valjean stirs and stands, unconscious of his body; Javert has only time to again regret his impetuousness before Valjean, who knows Javert's possessions as well as he knows his own, returns with the slippery, greasy concoction that the doctor who had seen Javert first in those early days of delirium had prescribed to be rubbed on the chest. There is still a little left and Javert puts together the offering with the scraps of knowledge he possessed. Daring not to betray his eagerness and his fear, he stretches out his hand and Valjean gives it to him with little ceremony. Valjean's own prick is hard and flushed, heavy and long, and when he stands it bobs a little, more fascinating, Javert feels, than it should be.   

 

Driven by the same instinct that had guided him right so far, he leans forward, grasps Valjean by the hip, and presses his face against his stomach; he feels his fingers almost on bone, kisses the lean muscle below his mouth, and, with as much tenderness as he can, a delicacy hard to maintain, he presses the same kisses to his hips.  His fingers trace the casual join of thigh to groin, the softness of the skin there, unblemished by anything, vulnerable in its simpleness. He has to muster more courage than he had thought to curl a hand around Valjean's prick; and yet, once he touches, all barriers are gone; there is no doubt in him.

 

Valjean's hand rests lightly on his head, fingers curling a little spasmodically in his hair, the large muscle in his thigh twitching as he tenses one leg and then relaxes, as Javert with no previous intent, gently strokes him, fingertips slipping over the beading slickness at the head, smoothing it down the shaft and then with an almost thoughtless motion follows that path with his mouth for fleeting seconds. Valjean shudders and shakes forward for an instant before he restrains himself; Javert, shaken back into full thought, allows Valjean to rest himself upon the bed.

 

As though unwilling to leave for a second, he glides his hands up the stalwart muscles, first of his thighs and then of his torso, and once more strokes his hand down the full curve of Valjean's prick, now tight against his stomach. This awes him, the strength that Valjean restrains, the powerfulness of the body beneath him, the thrill that Valjean not merely lets him touch his fill but is content, even eager, for him to do so.

 

He is kneeling on the bed now, mattress hard beneath his knee, and he can think of nothing but this, the hot pulse of blood in his veins. Valjean begins to twitch his hips a little, as though in an effort to get more contact, and Javert hesitates, caught in the unknown, unsure of exactly what to do, of how to start. He discovers different types of courage each day, he thinks; each day he lives, when in a failure of everything he had tried to die.

 

Groping in the covers he finds the pot of supposedly medicinal grease and scoops some out, lets it drip between his fingers as it heats a little, heedless of the mess. Valjean turns over without a word, pillows his head on his hands, face down in the pillow. He spreads his legs a little as though he wishes to encourage Javert but is not strictly sure how to do so. It is enough and Javert presses his hand to the flesh of Valjean's arse and with the gentleness he has learnt and paid for in full coin, he slides a finger into the warm grasp of Valjean’s body, not entirely sure still of this but sure enough that he presses on, watches the play of Valjean’s back as he shifts unconsciously under the intrusion, does not allow himself to withdraw until the tightness yields somewhat around him. His breath comes shorter, quicker as though in sympathy and he cannot look away. With calmness he does not feel, he presses a second finger in and feels more than hears Valjean grunt at the sensation and flinch a little away as though it is too much too soon.

 

With purpose he slides them out and then in again, coarsely thrusting them, wet and slick inside Valjean as close as he can be to what the other man is, he may have this at least, Valjean so close that they cannot be told apart and maybe something of the other man’s peace might transfer itself as though by some mysterious osmosis to him. He thinks wild thoughts such as these as he watches the slowness of his fingers, the swiftness with which sweat has risen to Valjean’s back as he trembles and first leans away and then widens his thighs. He cannot resist bowing his head to the curve of that back, feels the heat that always suffuses Valjean as though he has some burning centre to him that cannot be seen, only felt.

 

There are restless movements under him now and with caution he caresses Valjean, runs his hand up his leg from the indented space of the back of his knee, up the strength of his thigh to his arse, where Javert is taking him with two fingers as best as he can, and without any touch his prick is hard and aching between his thighs, anxious for the tight heat around Valjean’s fingers that he cannot imagine without an aching shudder, around his prick. Valjean’s fists are buried in the thin covers, his knees canted now like an invitation, his face still hidden from sight. The back of his neck is flushed and vulnerable and despite his pose that is all of him that is vulnerable, there is nothing of him from scars to age that draws anything but respect from Javert, a respect earned twice over now.

 

When Valjean raises his face and turns it back, Javert sees the naked emotion in his eyes, the easiness with which he is now laid bare and imagines the same must be written on  his countenance, no dissemblance possible in this moment and he can’t bear to be away for another minute from the smoothness of his skin. It is awkward again, how could it not be, when he withdraws his fingers from Valjean and hears the groan of the other man, a sigh whose provenance he cannot make out, whether it stems from loss or relief. The clutch of Valjean’s hand on his thigh decides him though, and with unsteady fingers he covers himself with the last of the grease, pushes himself in deep, with effort, Valjean’s body repelling him at first before he with strength he did not think he still possessed pushed on in. Valjean was moving now, the tiniest of thrusts backwards as he sought to bring them closer together, and Javert with one last sigh sinks into him, aligned their bodies fully together, as near as they might be in this world.

 

He remained like that for a few seconds before with slow strokes he begins to thrust, the old animal rhythm that came naturally, the warmth and the tightness around him threatening to make him spill early, and he quickens at the thought, his thrusts shorter and sharper and Valjean’s breath grew ragged under him. Underneath him, Valjean took his own prick into his hand and was handling it swiftly, until Javert with the memory of the slickness under his fingers twines his hand around him as well, met his speed, synchronized their touch until Valjean so silent through it all, now gave vent to sound, and Javert who could not have thought he desired more was  struck again by the failure of his imagination. With such a man spread before him he can not hold onto the fleeing shreds of his control and with a helpless muttered word he comes, spends himself inside Valjean and lets the pounding of his heart slow down for long moments. Valjean is still hard underneath him when Javert reluctantly withdraws and with scant regard for the  decencies immediately wraps his fingers back around Valjean and brings him to his climax swiftly and gently.

 

He could not have slept after that despite the bone tiredness in his veins, despite the sudden fear that his landlady had heard them through the walls and down the stairs, or the chill that raced through him now that he was done, that he had drawn Valjean into his doubt and his darkness, had pressed him too far and too hard, beyond the bounds of whatever it was they had grown to share. He makes a long arm for the washstand and the face-cloth upon it, cleans them as meticulously as he can without the benefit of fresh water, until Valjean lays firm fingers upon his arm and bids him stop. Then he lies there for long minutes until he turns his face and saw the wondering on Valjean’s and the indignity of two men on such a small bed so close together struck him with his rarely used sense of the ridiculous and he can not resist, nor does he even try, the twitch of the lips that attends the thought.

 

They dress again, nakedness in the afternoon not a habit either of them indulged in, even after what they had done, and sat with delicate ease on the two chairs Javert owned, drinking the wine that Valjean had brought this time, breaking their fast with bread going too quickly stale, a meal a monk might not have been ashamed of. The room itself seems different to Javert’s eyes, lighter than the gloomy hole he had returned to this afternoon after his disappointment, though he acknowledgedsthat the peaceful presence of Valjean had always aided such a transformation.

 

“I should like you to visit more,” Valjean says suddenly and rolls a little bread between his fingers. “Perhaps you would meet Cosette and set Marius’s fears at rest. He knows you are alive of course but sometimes I think he fears what his part in the insurrection might lead to,” and he deliberately does not look at Javert as he says that, as though he fears old wounds re-opening.

 

Javert considers it and at length assents. Perhaps if he knows those Valjean loves, a little more, he might know Valjean better also, and he realises with a certainty that the closeness of the afternoon had done little to abate, that there was very little else he wishes so much.

 


End file.
